Flagellant

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And shoould be them to fear daemons? Seriosly!?

Flagellants are smelly religious hobos that fight for the Empire of Man against Chaos or anyone who threatens their livelihood. In the fluff, they are insane murderhobos who have lost everything, and believe the only path to salvation is to brutally torture themselves, massacre their enemies, and preach their message to any who will hear it (read: anyone within a ten-fucking-mile radius of these screaming cunts). While the common flagellants tend to "devote" themselves to Sigmar (thus beating themselves while beating off to that beautiful barbaric beard), some flagellants are just generic loonies who might possibly worship another God and are here as punishment. It's not actually clarified in the lore if any of this madness is actually part of Sigmar's teaching, but nobody seems to care. The Warrior Priests and other holy men of the Empire tend lead many flagellant warbands, likely since it's the only way these madmen can be directed to doing anything even remotely productive. Some groups completely devote themselves to a particular person, like the Tattered souls, Volkmar the Grim's most zealous followers and some fucking creepy stalkers.

Old lore also had a Chaos equivalant in the diseased flagellants, basically people who caught some manner of incurable disease and were exiled from their homes so they started wandering around, whipping themselves in hopes of getting Nurgle's mercy.

On Tabletop

On the tabletop, they are a ludicrously expensive unit that needs to be in numbers of 30+ to even be worth taking, and even then they'll die to anything within a turn or two of combat. Their strength is that they'll take down whatever they're fighting too. For example, say the enemy has a 500pt unit of chaos knights with a fancy chaos lord marching towards your flank; just send in your 300pt unit of flagellants to delete the fuckers. Sure, your flagellants are dead, but so are the enemy, so who cares.

In total Warhammer: War, they are a part of the 'Grim and the Grave' DLC that should have just been in the base fucking game. They are unbreakable, with little to no defence so they cave quickly in the face of strong opponents which makes them less useful than your normal state troops unless you're going for a gimmick.

Age of Sigmar

In Age of Sigmar their lore is...Peculiar. While is said that Sigmar, being the fabulous order God he is, tends to invoke unquestionably zealous and unbreakable faith in his followers, flagellants now are quite varied in the lore. In the Grand Alliance: Order book, flagellants are citizens of Azyr who become completely devoted to Sigmar, following his holy crusade and re-conquering lands fallen to chaos. They are incredibly useful indeed, because thanks to processions, martyrdom and self-mortification across the corrupted land, their blood removes the chaos taint,allowing normal people to occupy and settle on those lands. And this time we don't have someone to pin the blame on for this bullshit since GW doesn't give names for the lore-writers of these books.

It's still true that flagellants can be just simple men, devoted to Sigmar but without an ounce of military training who nonetheless raise up arms and rebel against their chaotic oppressors once the armies of order arrive. The most notable example of this case are the Tempest Lords, a Stormcast Chamber who inspired a clan of humans to stand up against their Minotaur slavers, and have several other flagellant warbands attached to them.

The new book of the Cities of Sigmar actually confirmed that band of flagellants go out of the Cities for purify the country around the former, purifying the land with "holy rituals and act of sacrifice" (aka, suicide and flogging their backs bloody). This also means that all the crap that flagellants are doing from the times of the world-that-was is actually THE Sigmar's way, because their faith can literally eliminate chaos corruption. This give you the awkward question... Is Sigmar really that goodly a god if people have to do such crazy acts of supplication for his blessing? Not that this isn't a recurring theme, But the other gods of order and peace aren't that good either. Also, who else would make his priests look so fucking cool while he answers their prayers? (search cinematics of mark of chaos and warhammer online for see what i mean.)

Early in the game they were the only ones that got buff from warriors priests prayers (and we are talking about insanely strong buffs) but now they are just loonies since Warrior Priests are effectively gone. Their role changed to trash infantry, with a good move, incredibly bravery and a great buff if they charge, and shit combat stats. Don't expect to them to stay alive more than 3 rounds, but don't be afraid to sacrifice them, because they got more attacks if they die. Also they don't run away, they LAUNCH THEMSELVES IN A CRAZY, FINAL ATTACK TO KILLING ONE LAST HERETIC BEFORE THEY DIE!